“The Apollo Murders” by Chris Hadfield

 I found this book almost unreadable and skipped 90% of it. To me, it’s written from the point of view of a slightly arrogant robot. Too much fact, not enough substance.

“The Hunter” by Tana French

 Some errors in the writing style near the beginning of the book turned me off the author, even though I was enjoying the book itself. However, as the book progressed, she stopped using cheap American colloquialisms in her descriptions, and her frequent mention of a yellow plant fell to the background, so I ended up quite enjoying the story. It consisted of a missing youth, a retired cop from Chicago, and an apparently ‘sweet’  village in Ireland. The characters were quite well developed and I liked the greyness of their moral decisions. It seemed true to life.

“Lullabies for Little Criminals” by Heather O’Neill

This book is an amazingly realistic account of a 12 year old street child, Baby, with a drug-taking and irrational but loving father, Jules. She is very bright, but due to decisions by adults, becomes a drug taking prostitute living with her pimp. Some parts were so difficult to read that I had to skim them.

As in most Heather O’Neill novels, the story takes place in Montreal, a setting which I enjoy. And as in all the Heather O’Neill novels I have read, there is an uplifting ending. Thank god for cousin Janine in Val de Loups. 

"To Speak for the Trees" by Diana Beresford-Kroeger

I enjoyed the early sections of the book, which dealt with the author's early life in Ireland and then her move to Canada. Her bloodline is very blue, she was orphaned at an early age and instructed by Druids. She encountered misogyny in her Canadian research posts, even though she was highly intelligent.

The latter part of the book, which dealt specifically with trees, climatr change etc did not interest me. I skimmed it.

“The Downloaded” by Robert J. Sawyer

I enjoyed the 1st half of the book. It was a straightforward SF story that included murder and a deadly meteor heading towards an earth that had already been devastated by a nuclear war, which destroyed all technology. Only non technological Mennonites in the Waterloo area seemed to have survived. A group of criminal and scientists woke up to this scenario, after having been frozen for hundreds of years, with their brains uploaded into a quantum computer that had provided them with a simulated reality. They were soon approached by the hologram of a Martian, the result of earth’s colonization of Mars.

I lost interest in the story when it was revealed that the Martian had been assessing the revived astronauts and convicts to see if they were suitable for Martian  society. What a cliche! Of course, they weren’t good enough for living with the Martians,  and the people who chose to go to Mars were kindly given a separate living dome. Basically, the story became a shallow sociological and ethical treatise and I began noticing plot holes. How could an advanced society not have noticed a huge rock heading towards earth much earlier? (The author says they weren’t looking in that direction. Sheesh.) How in the world can you transfer consciousness into a computer? What even is consciousness? Boring!

“The Empusium” by Olga Tokarczuk

This book was billed as a health resort horror story. It took place in 1913 in a TB sanatorium in a part of Germany that now belongs to Poland. The primary horror turned out to be the misogyny of the men, to the extent that they thought women might not even be fully human. I found out that even my hero Darwin thought women were inferior beings, because they didn’t have to struggle to survive. Sheesh. Nature, of course, took revenge on men in this village, demanding an annual sacrifice.

The protagonist turned out to be intersex, and at the end, adopted their female persona. WWl started, and a reset occurred. The book was filled with mostly useless conversations by pompous men, and yet I enjoyed it. It felt like a lived experience.

“The Internet of Animals” by Martin Wikelski

 This book was much too wordy so I mostly skimmed it. It was about the development of the Icarus project which will use satellites to retrieve data from tagged animals, which will help us track what is happening on our planet. My favorite part was the author’s reference to Western civilization’s biggest failure… ignoring the world of animals in its philosophical systems, concentrating only on physical sciences. 

“Rosemary’s Baby” by Ira Levin

 I enjoyed this book more than I expected. It really is well done. No need to repeat the plot. It’s well known.

“Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus” by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

As I read it, I began to think of this book as a comedy. One after another, Frankenstein’s dearest died, and he experienced overwrought passions yet again. 

I liked the idea of the book being a comedy because the deaths were actually very sad. And I was failing to see why this book is so popular and a classic. Then I read the monster’s soliloquy at the very end, and I suddenly loved the book. The monster was despised for what he looked like, by people who were no better than he was. In fact, the Monster was a refined being with deep feelings. This ending turns the entire book over on its head.

“Stone Blind” by Natalie Haynes

 This book about Medusa was choppy, and some of the mythology was unknown/forgotten by me, making parts a bit tricky to follow. For example, I don’t know if Perseus did as much killing as Medusa’s head states. Also, what was it with the weird ending, where a lonely Athena commits suicide by looking at Medusa, whom she herself created into a monster.

On the other hand, the book had a pleasantly ironic sense of humour, which made me laugh in parts. And making Medusa’s head sentient was quite clever, but it took a bit long to get there.

“The Librarianist” by Patrick deWitt

 I quite enjoyed this novel, and found it quite riveting in parts. I must admit, though, that the chapters with the thespian women were a bit too artificially whimsical, and that I was slightly irritated by the chronology. 

The book starts in the present. Bob, the retired, book loving librarian protagonist led a lost, somewhat comatose woman back to a seniors home, where he started volunteering. He found out that she was the wife who had abandoned him for his best friend, and with that big revelation, the book suddenly started going backwards to Bob’s childhood and marriage, ignoring the present day implications of the big revelation.

I’ve just realized an additional layer of depth in the book. Bob’s addled ex wife Connie helped him a lot by causing him to discover the seniors’ home, where Bob made friends and built a nice life for himself. He eventually met up with Connie’s son, and was able to tell him about his father, who had been killed in a hit and run soon after marrying Connie. 

This book has left me with a nice feeling of completion.

“In the Woods” by Tana French

 The author has a great gift for meaningful dialog and complex psychology. As a result, I enjoyed this book despite the fact that the traumatized protagonist/detective turned out to be a great jerk after he slept with his partner/friend, we never found out what happened to his friends in the woods decades earlier, and the psychopathic girl who arranged for her sister’s murder got off scott free. 

The book is brimming with intelligence, but is also frustrating, for the reasons above. Apparently the later books in the series are each about different characters and have better endings, but I have no interest in finding out. The Irish setting was interesting to me, of course.

“The Deepest Map” by Laura Trethewey

 I enjoyed this very informative book about exploring and mapping the ocean depths. It opened my eyes to a number of issues including the ecological dangers of deep sea mining and the submerged archaeological information of human habitats. I studied Marine Biology many decades ago, and I find that my interest in the ocean still persists.

“The Mystery of the Yellow Room” by Gaston Leroux (Otto Penzler)

 I was not much impressed by this locked room mystery by the author of “Phantom of the Opera”. It was overly complicated and overly pedantic. It was also a bit overwrought, but that was likely due to the 1907 publication date. 

"The Future" by Catherine Leroux

This book's defender on Canada Reads must have done an amazing job for it to win, because for the most part it is simply boring and sometimes unintelligible, with a touch of magic realism just for fun. I expected an alternate history of Detroit to be more interesting, and definitely less concerned with the life of a drug addict, or the lives of neglected children living in a ravine.

“The Girl Who Drank the Moon” by Kelly Barnhill

 I did not overly enjoy this Newberry Award winning book. Usually I like Young Adult novels, but I think the premise for this one was a bit too ephemeral, and the character development a bit too thin, to grab my attention. It also felt quite derivative and long. 

The basic summary is that a region called The Protectorate was very sad because every year they gave up a baby to whom they thought was an evil witch in the forest, not knowing that the truly evil, sorrow eating witch, lived in a tower in town, She trained girls to be warriors and was the source of the sorrowful lies. Luna, the heroine, was a sacrificial baby. She was saved by the forest witch, who accidentally enmagicked her with moonlight, and there was a creature who lived in the bog who was some sort of Creator, as in God, and there was a cute little dragon who thought he was big. I’m sure if I bothered analyzing the book, it has a number of beautiful themes.

“Carrie” by Stephen King

 It was an enjoyable enough read even though I knew the basic story. I skipped over some of the ugly bullying sections.

“The Final Confession of Mabel Stark” by Robert Hough

 This is mostly a fictional biography about a real person. It was an interesting book, I suppose, but only a few sections gripped me emotionally. I guess now I know about the sexual pleasuring of tigers, among other things. 

“The Passenger” by Cormac McCarthy

 I tried this book because I loved “The Road”. However, I gave up fairly quickly because I did not like the muddled timeline and incomprehensible plot. I was persevering until the book became very Macho, in the way the protagonist talked about his experiences in the Vietnam war.

“Birnam Wood” by Eleanor Canton

 I stopped reading this book fairly early because I did not like any of the characters. Environmental warrior extremists and evil business magnates are not for me. I read the ending and it was a miserable downer without a final resolution. I was glad I had skipped the book.

“The Running Grave” by Robert Galbraith (Cormoran Strike Mystery)

 This JK Rowling novel about a cult was riveting. I stayed up half the night reading it. The characters are very well developed and I do enjoy the methodical descriptions of how the mystery is tackled. Obviously, I think, Robin’s character borrows a lot from Rowling herself. My minor complaint is that there are so many characters that it’s a bit hard to keep track of them. Fortunately, the search function in my ebook solves that issue.

"The Case of the Careless Cupid" by Erle Stanley Gardner

Enjoyable as usual. And as usual, I have fun with the retro elements in the book.

"Study for Obedience" by Sarah Bernstein

 This is an unreliable 1st person  account by someone who may be either a sociopath or a victim or both, and has moved to her brother's home in a country where the Jews were persecuted. The book was short listed for the Booker prize, and is well thought of.  It was well written but I can't say I enjoyed it. I prefer slightly more solid plots.

“Secrets of the Greek Revival” by Eva Pohler

 The story kept my attention and I liked that its focus was the rest cure. However, the writing style is quite average and simplistic. I would call it “middle-aged housewife style”. From the straightforward plotting and dialogue, you can tell that the author has written a lot of YA literature.

The main protagonists were middle aged women with empty nest syndrome. Among a number of other writing faults, I got tired of hearing about the times when the lead woman peed herself a bit. There were also too many people walking around who believed in ghosts as if it were the most normal thing in the world. The entertainment value of the book is not enough to overcome its intellectual failings. I will not read this author again.

"The African Queen" by C. S. Forester

 This was an amusing little read.  Rose and Allnutt were an interesting contrast in personalities. The descriptions of Africa and boating were well done... short and evocative. And Rose's strength of character and her supreme competence were pleasantly surprising in a book written in the 1930's.

“Killing Time” by Caleb Carr

 This was an odd SF book, that seemed more like an intellectual exercise than a novel. Caleb Carr has shown in other books that he can create believable characters, so perhaps he’s not comfortable with the genre. Despite its failings, the book was interesting because it touched on many modern issues, primarily the manipulation of large groups of people through technologically generated misinformation.

“Making it So: A Memoir” by Patrick Stewart

 I disliked this book so much I had to skim it. It was overly detailed, and I became particularly tired of the references to Stewart’s love life and unworthiness as an actor. The beginning was somewhat interesting because I approached it like a work of historical fiction, but it quickly dissolved into what felt like name dropping  and a pompous, falsely humble list of successes. I came away with the conclusion that Patrick Stewart is, at heart, a very ordinary and boring person.

"The Complete Supernatural Stories" by Edith Wharton

 It's nice to know that such an acclaimed author enjoyed the supernatural. The stories were well written of course, but sometimes they had too much atmosphere and not enough action. Several stories detailed absolutely horrific treatment of husbands towards their wives. Much more horrific than you would find in an ordinary ghost story, I think.